By Liz Reisberg. Another overseas programs appears to be biting the dust. The University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) is not renewing its contract with the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT). This brings into question yet again why universities pursue these overseas ventures when they are rarely profitable and difficult to sustain.
At the very least these initiatives demonstrate the complexities of cross-border, cross-culture activity.  Putting two countries together is not necessarily the neat sum of the parts. Typically, the sending country and the receiving country operate on very different models for higher education.  Models differ not only in program design and structure but also in the distribution of financial obligation between student and government. Sadly, at a time when Republican ideology is fervently anti-tax, US universities (both public and private) are continually searching for new sources of revenue.  Support from foreign governments can be very alluring. Too often university administrators pursue this revenue without careful consideration of the long-term implications. Foreign governments are not interested in subsidizing US higher education in order to make up for deficits of the anti-tax US environment; they have objectives of their own.  The objectives of the foreign government are too often overlooked or under-valued by a US institution. Read more...

By Joyce Lau. This week, the IHT education section takes a look at the liberal arts, the largely North American education system that emphasizes a broad base of learning. It is slowly making inroads in Europe and Asia, where university courses have traditionally been more narrowly focused.
In Hong Kong, I met with Rebecca Chopp, the president of Swarthmore College, a top liberal arts colleges in the United States. Professor Chopp was on a whirlwind Asia tour that also included Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Shanghai and Suzhou, China. Like most college presidents on the road, she was there to visit alumni, raise funds and recruit students. She was also in a position to explain the pluses of a liberal arts education in a region where it’s still a foreign concept. Read more...

By Katherine Sellgren. "Negative rhetoric" from the government is deterring international students from applying to UK universities, says a university vice-chancellor. Prof Edward Acton, vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, warns of a sharp fall in the UK's share of the international student market.
Similar concerns have been raised by Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group of leading universities.
The government says tougher regulation of net migration is necessary. Under new visa regulations that came into force in April, students face tougher questions about their destination, limits on their ability to work and harder questions on their English-language capability. Read more...

New directions for California’s historic Master Plan, strategies for improving the success of undergraduate diversity programs in the sciences, and fundamental questions facing Chinese research universities aspiring to the first rank are examined in three new journal articles by CSHE researchers and affiliates:
Saul Geiser and Richard C. Atkinson, “Beyond the Master Plan: The Case for Restructuring Baccalaureate Education in California,” California Journal of Politics and Policy, vol. 4, January 2013, pp. 67-123. http://cshe.berkeley.edu/
California ranks near the bottom of the states in the proportion of its college-age population that attains a 4-year baccalaureate degree and last in the proportion of its college students who attend a 4-year campus. Using comparative data from other states, Geiser and Atkinson demonstrate that this poor record of B.A. production is an unforeseen consequence of the California Master Plan’s restrictions on access to 4-year baccalaureate institutions. Arguing that California’s existing postsecondary system needs to be restructured, Geiser and Atkinson explore a variety of reforms adopted in other states that, if adopted here, could enable more students to enter baccalaureate programs directly from high school.
Anne J. MacLachlan, “Minority Undergraduate Programs Intended to Increase Participation in Biomedical Careers,” Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine: A Journal of Translational and Personalized Medicine, vol. 79, November/December 2012, pp. 769–781. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
Undergraduate programs intended to increase minority participation in the biomedical sciences and in science generally are numerous and ubiquitous, but not necessarily as successful as desired. There is a long pathway from the federal agencies that create many of these programs through the principal investigator (PI) and faculty who run them to the student. MacLachlan examines how this path is based on an assumed shared understanding of central concepts such as “diversity” and “self-efficacy” even though there is no clearly established or shared meaning among the various actors. How these concepts are implemented strongly reflects both the institution where the program is housed and the PI. She contrasts a small number of federal programs with two very successful student-centered local programs based on a different conceptual model.
John Aubrey Douglass, “China Futurisms: Research Universities as Leaders or Followers?” Social Research: An International Quarterly, vol.79, no. 3, Fall 2012, pp. 639-688. http://socialresearch.metapress.com/
If China wishes to develop a set of comprehensive research universities that are truly among the top in the world, it will need to decide whether the role of research universities is to reflect Chinese society or to lead it as places for cutting-edge thought and debate. The National Outline for Medium and Long Term Educational Reform and Development appears to be a step toward supporting a select group of universities to adopt features of some of the world’s best universities, including greater autonomy and funds for improving academic management. Douglass discusses the emerging consensus among China’s academic leaders about what its universities will need to fully mature and the prospects for success.

The aim of the project is to improve the quality and innovation of teaching, learning and research in Israeli second-tier academic institutions, state-funded academic colleges, and thereby to reduce the gap between the two tiers of Israel’s higher education system, by promoting internationalization policies, capacities and culture into Israeli academic colleges.
The development of infrastructures and capacities for international relations at academic colleges will create opportunities for improving academic quality and standards, create access to new funding opportunities and generally increase the competitiveness of the colleges and the employability prospects of their graduates.
Increasing excellence and strengthening the capacities of academic colleges is therefore a strategic goal of Israeli Higher Education Policy, which aims to provide wider approachability to higher education and to direct most of the demand for undergraduate studies to the colleges. Read more...

By Sumedha Jalote. The provincial government of British Columbia (BC), Canada unveiled a refreshed LearnLiveBC, an information portal designed to answer the questions of students around the world considering universities in British Columbia.
The website is part of BC’s international education strategy released in May 2012, and will help the province attract more international students. According to the government, BC will gain 1800 jobs and CA$100 million (US$101.5 million) in GDP for a 10 per cent increase in the number of international students. In 2010-2011, BC hosted 100,700 international students, a 7 per cent increase from the previous year. Read more...

By Katy Hopkins. Online education is a booming part of the higher education sector. More than 6.7 million students took an online course at a U.S. institution in fall 2011—an all-time high.
For international students like Slovenia resident Mateja Klaric, online education could be a particularly attractive option: a chance to earn a top-notch U.S. education without having to physically be in the country.
"For someone like me, who doesn't live in the U.S. (not to mention having a full-time job), online [education] is the only option," the 45-year-old Klaric, who's currently enrolled at Arizona State University Online, wrote in an E-mail to U.S. News. "Tuition is still extremely expensive, but I can work and the costs of living are considerably lower here." Read more...

By David Matthews. Mainland recognition of foreign degrees taught in Hong Kong is key for UK, writes David Matthews.
Foreign degrees taught in Hong Kong are set to be recognised in mainland China, potentially opening up a huge new market for UK universities.
Chinese officials told delegates at a British Council conference in Beijing that they are close to expanding a mutual recognition agreement to cover overseas qualifications, which would attract more students from the mainland to study in the city.
UK institutions offer around 70 per cent of the overseas programmes taught in Hong Kong, the Quality Assurance of Degrees Awarded in a 3rd Country conference, held on 10 December, heard. Read more...